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dkd903 writes "Delivering the keynote at the Ubuntu Developer Summit at Budapest, Hungary, Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Canonical's goal is to have 200 million Ubuntu users in four years. Canonical has not officially provided any data on how many Ubuntu users there currently are — in fact, the number is quite difficult to track. However, according to Prakash Advani, a partner manager for Central Asia at Canonical, there are an estimated 12 million Ubuntu users."

Design is at the centre of Shuttleworth’s roadmap for Unity [newstechnica.com]. “I woke up one day and thought, ‘Gosh, I’d really like to make using my universal general-purpose computer that I can do ANYTHING with feel like I’m using a locked-down three-year-old half-smart phone through the clunky mechanism some l33t h@xx0r used to jailbreak it, I can’t think of a better user experience.’ We’re not quite there yet, but this gets Unity a lot of the way.”

OS X got a right slagging when it was released for dumping many of the spatial cues that were so carefully built into classic MacOS. Apple actually fixed many of the issues, but it's a wonder that Unity and Gnome 3 chose to put themselves in an even worse position than OS X when it released. It's all very well to introduce a new workflow, but some people are comfortable the way they were. If you don't provide a migration path to those people, you just make them angry and frustrated.

Unity and Gnome 3 are perfectly sound from a design standpoint, but they're lacking in their implementation. A task oriented desktop is a good thing, but it has to be introduced in a way that doesn't alienate existing users.

The stupid part is UIs have already been down this road when OS X launched and was panned for dumping many of the paradigms in MacOS classic. Apple listened to the criticism and reinstated many of them or produced analogs. It's too bad that Unity / Gnome 3 did think to learn and have

The counting issue is sticky. I for example don't consider myself an ubuntu user, but my work desktop, and 4 or so servers at work run ubuntu. My home machines are all gentoo. I think that most long time linux users are multi-distro in this sense. Of course there are always the stats from as a base to work from. With some stats you could possibly extrapolate. [li.org]

This last version of Ubuntu caused me some serious grief during the upgrade. Once installed I was unimpressed with Unity. I tried Gnome 3.0 a couple weeks back and I upgraded several machines to 4.6.x of KDE. My comparison of Unity is based on the design goals and functionality of those other products.

Gnome 3.0 and Unity appear to be targeting the GUI toward those same people that held back computers in the late 80s and early 90s. Those people were happy with the DOS menu systems where they typed a number or letter corresponding to a menu entry that launched a given program. Unity (and Gnome to some degree) is that represented in GUI form. It is NOT the answer and it will NOT contribute to those 200 million target users.

I have used Ubuntu for many years now. I have used computers since the early 80s. Ubuntu runs my primary machine. I have almost 20 Ubuntu machines in my shop. I use it for everything you can imagine and I don't find it difficult to learn nor to use. When Windows users come into the shop I sit them down in front of an Ubuntu machine. I simply direct them in the same way I would direct a Windows user--click here, select that, drag and drop there--without much resistance from the user.

But recently I have been thinking that Mark Shuttleworth needs to give Ubuntu away to some other group of people to manage. Canonical's direction just isn't cutting it, and dumbing it down isn't going to cure any woes. The problems are with the under-pinnings, not the GUI. For instance, I had a problem that pointed to the/var/lib/dpkg/status file had an error at or near a given line. No hint on what was wrong, no hint as to what that file was for, but an error that stopped the install and that wouldn't let me continue with the upgrade. I found an obscure reference to the error message, edited the file, and continued on. Then another error was generated and I needed to resolve it. Then another error, and another, and finally a reference to the same type of error in another file similar to the first one. Upon correcting that I was able to get the upgrade going again. Then after that I received even more errors making it was not possible to get to the GUI desktop -- on a computer that had been successfully running 10.10 for 6 months. After starting in recovery mode (safe start) I was able get into the desktop and download the updated nVidia drivers. I installed those drivers and continued till I was at the desktop. All in all, correcting those errors, cost me 6 hours of my day.

Whatever they are doing it isn't working and dumbing it down with hopes of attracting 200 million people won't succeed.

Some time ago they stated that Ubuntu had 12 million users with Fedora having 24 million. The other distros combined could easily bring that number between 75 million and 100 million users of Linux (not just Ubuntu).

I have the whole cadre of OS installs on various machines because that's what I do for a living. I don't think either the Macintosh nor Windows has the future potential of Linux. Let's just not let one man dumb down the OS interface to the point of it just being dumb.

To this day, the only thing I find lacking is multimedia players (and I especially miss Winamp).

Which winamp? The newer versions with all that library management crap, or the old simple "player?" (I ask because I'm definitely a fan of the latter, as it doesn't feel the need to mess with my tree-based organization)

Audacious does the latter, and is almost a clone of the old winamp v2. I can't judge the former because I don't like them even when they do work "well," but I hear praise for Amarok a lot.

For videos, VLC lives on all my machines, Linux and Windows alike (but for some reason, it's a really CPU hog when simply trying to play MP3s, thus, audacious).

Considering PSN is apparently 75 million users, if the numbers for Ubuntu keep growing then we will hopefully see more developers who consider it worthwhile to port their games over. The first to get there stands to do well out of a niche market like us. I've bought Linux games that I still haven't even played, just to encourage the developers. The reason I've not played them is that my only PC right now is a netbook. I'd build a gaming PC again if there was a vibrant Linux gaming scene. As it is, I do all my gaming on consoles just now.

So you support gaming only on the free linux, but avoid the bad non-free windows gaming by going to totally propritary route of consoles, where not only the hardware is propritary, but people have to pay to microsoft and sony to be allowed to make games...

Why did you leave out Nintendo? You had/have to pay for dev kits for their consoles as well. At least Microsoft lets indie people make games without needing to have office space and other ridiculous restrictions like Nintendo imposes.

Does not $11.82 come between $11 and $12? So they said it was a 6 game pack vs a 5 game pack. That would raise the average to $2.36/game which is really a negligible difference. Counter this to Half-Life 2 which sold $6.5 million games sold at a far higher average price than the $2.36/game that people on Linux were paying for the Humble Bundle. Or to Starcraft II which sold 1.5 million copies in 2 days at probably $50 a pop.

And the Humble Bundle is more or less, children's games. Not knocking them at all, I've purchased all three, but I get them for my niece and nephew. They are not at all comparable to Half-Life 2, Battlefield (series) or any other ~$50 game available. I have yet to play the new Frozen bundle, but they just don't appear to be of the same high-dollar drawing game play caliber as the big companies put out. If you want a good comparison to the first two bundles, I'd go with Angry Birds, which we can see the aver

They are not at all comparable to Half-Life 2, Battlefield (series) or any other ~$50 game available.

Especially when something like Starcraft II sold more copies in 2 days and generated more than a magnitude more revenue than all of the Humble Bundles combined. That anyone would think that saying that some group of people paid $11.82 on average for a 5 game bundle is going to mean some AAA studio is going to rush to make games for Linux is laughable.

How much did it cost to make the 50 dollar game?How much did it cost to make the 2 dollar game?

You have scale issues.

A very interesting report on Eurogamer.net, informed partly by a recent interview on Maxitmag.co.uk, reveals that Half-Life 2's development has cost developer Valve upwards of $40 million to-date - a gigantic figure where videogame development is concerned.

...on the other hand, plenty of people are making money with that sort of model these days.

Sure there are companies doing it, but if you want to attract companies like Valve you are going to need more to show for it then that the average person paid $2.36 per game for the Humble Bundle especially when the Humble Bundles were only getting like 100,000 donations. On the other hand, Starcraft II sold 1.5 million copies in 2 days or Half Life 2 which sold millions and millions of copies within the first couple of months.

Uh, Loki was publishing modern games... just to pick a few of the AAA titles,

Civ:CTP: published March 1999, Loki released it in May 1999
HOMM 3: published February 1999, Loki released it in December 1999
Quake 3: published December 2, 1999. Loki released it December 7, 1999
SMAC: published February 1999 with the expansion pack released in 2000. Loki released it with the expansion pack in July 2000.

Loki was releasing current AAA games, their problems were with the financial management of the company, paying large sums to get the rights to AAA titles to port, overestimates of how many people would pay for the games (and they were pirated heavily by people that bought the Windows version and felt entitled to the Linux version for free) and with that an oversupply of retail packages (which is why you can still find some Loki games new in the box), and by trying to grow too big too fast.

I happened to buy most of what Loki put out while they were still in business because I was glad to be freed from Windows even if it meant I had to wait a staggering 5 days or even a couple months to get the games on my platform of choice. Waiting a few weeks is the price I paid to get what I wanted, much like you can eat a steak raw or take the time to cook and season it to your taste.

In the wake of Loki, the "main" Linux porting house became LGP and, yeah, I'll agree, they put out overpriced older B or C title games. I think they overcompensated for Loki's failure with the AAA market and, based over casual observation of the last couple years and the continuous catastrophes they seem to inflict upon themselves by being too low budget, I'm not sure how much longer they'll be around either. That doesn't mean there isn't a market for Linux games, only the two big porting houses got it wrong. Meanwhile, some publishers are quite happy putting out their own ports, whether they're done in house or contracted out For a major studio looking solely at the business aspect, Linux sales might not be worth the effort, but for smaller studios and indie developers, a Linux port may end up giving them a substantial influx of cash.

It's far more likely that Loki was driven out of business by dealing with Electronic Arts and the fact that Linux desktop software was just getting started at the time. People like to dredge Loki up as an example and then neglect how very long it's been since then.

Loki was a porting house and had the same problems as any porting house including those for Macs.

That's why you can then point to LGP as well which had to implement DRM a couple years back because most Linux people were pirating their games. Until Linux people can show that they can match the millions of PC games sales that average $40-50 a pop that you can get from making Windows games, it will never get first-class AAA game titles (getting a port of a AAA game title months to years after it comes to Windows doesn't count).

Linux does not have the home userbase Linux proponants like to think it does.

Yes it does. But since Windows is preinstalled on most new PCs anyway, dual-booting into Windows to play a game is better than waiting a year for a Linux version and being expected to pay $50 for it when the Windows version is $5.

Plus closed-source Linux software normally expects me to run an installer as root and installs its own copies of numerous libraries which probably have security holes; in some cases it even wants to add them to LD_LIBRARY_PATH by default, which is a crazy security risk.

I'd rather just keep a separate Windows PC or partition for games and do anything important in Linux.

Yes, I am so mad at myself for upgrading to this latest release. Suddenly, wireless stopped working, and the new UI is horrific, and even after wasting hours of my time fixing all of this, there are these video artifacts that come and go, and the whole system just seems less stable than before. I suppose in a few months it'll be fine again, but this is getting old.

Why, oh, why, can't Canonical just leave the UI alone? I don't want the window controls like "x" moved from the top right to the top left! I don't want to have to learn a whole new (and buggy) application launcher paradigm! Just work on adding more device support and making Linux more stable, more reliable, and more portable than ever before. We need more webcam support, more USB sound card support, more video drivers--there's plenty of work to be done under the hood. The UI takes care of itself--as people get more used to it, as more and more usage tips and FAQs appear on the internet, it gets easier.

Shuttleworth is obviously attempting to leverage Ubuntus existing popularity to somehow branch off the main Linux species. Like when a queen bee leaves one colony and takes a large number of worker bees in order to form her own hive. He doesnt want to be associated with Gnome any more, and wants his own distinctive look and feel, no matter whether he alienates a number of existing Gnome users. Its a gamble, he is speculating that a large enough number will follow his lead and switch to Unity, and then keep pushing, hyping and defending it like loyal Apple users do. He wants Unity to bring the (Linux based) desktop where Android brought the (Linux based) phone.

The problem with that, at least from my perspective, is that Shuttleworth is at war with options. In a recent blog post, he made the bizarre statement that in his view, every option you can set differently, divides users who set it differently, so they can't talk to each other any more. So his goal seems to be to allow as few different settable options as possible, i.e. a massive Gleichschaltung in order to build a strongly focused brand. He thinks that iOs like interfaces will be the future of the mass market, and wants to get there better sooner than later.

I dont know where he plans to get his 200 Million users from, but I doubt many of them will originate from Ubuntus current user base. It is a massive farewell to the 90's Linux tinkerer and a hello to the 2011's Apple affictionado.

Yes off to a bad start. I have three wildly different spec systems that have similar graphical glitches and stablity problems with 11.04, these are rigs that were rock solid with 10.10. The OS has fundamental problems this time around, that don't seem to be driver specific.

Partially agreed. I'm not happy with it due to the issues with Nvidia cards and Xorg server. Not their fault but that's a showstopper IMO. Unity (2D especially) needs work but it's not nearly as bad as the KDE4 fiasco. I think Unity will really be together in 12.04. Personally I use Lubuntu on my ancient laptop and either Lubuntu or Kubuntu on my desktop. I Have Unity 2D installed on my laptop as well just to play with it as it progresses.

GNOME shell is still a bit shaky. for now the best thing is to just select "ubuntu classic" on the login screen. THEN plan the move to something else (Mint is staying with old school GNOME for now, Arch is nice, FreeBSD is nice, etc., maybe xubuntu?) at a leisurely pace over the next six months. That's what I'll be doing unless Ubuntu changes heart.

I suppose I like it *more* than where Gnome is going, but I was/am pretty happy with my modified setup using Gnome 2.

Cripes, though.:/ Every time I read up on Gnome ignoring another set of interoperability standards I feel like giving KDE a try again... I love Linux, but it really depresses me how even the simplest things can't be agreed on.

I like it, and I'm not involved in ubuntu. It's sort of beta-quality in some ways (mainly because you can't configure it much yet without going to configuration files), so if you have no enthusiasm for trying the new thing I would wait until the next release. It's only in October after all. Personally I enjoy experimenting with it, and I find it pretty sleek and very responsive. Have upgrade my laptops and will soon upgrade the office desktop as well.

I'm not saying it's right; but I think the truth is that *they don't care*.

If you estimate the Ubuntu install base 20 million and they are aiming for 200 million in four years; that means for every one existing user you have, you need to add 9 more. It's far more important to appeal to the 9 who are new users than worry about alienating the existing 1.

I disabled auto-hide. And I think the menubar/title is a bit stupid, but it doesn't bother me.

My only real annoyance is that the whatever-bar expects you to run only one instance of any program. That's fine for Firefox or Evolution or whatever...but I tend to have like 15 terms open at a time. Represented by one icon? WTF. I have the same problem with OSX. Others just use one terminal window with many tabs, but that sucks for all sorts of reasons (tailing logs? debugging w/ line numbers? etc). I'm constantl

What do you mean it's still early in development? I don't care! I don't like change!

Well yes, but my reaction to it (and I've been using Linux since it was a single floppy boot disk...) was that it simply wasn't ready for prime time. So why ship a major distribution with this as the default?

Have you ever thought that maybe people liked Ubuntu because it was going in the right direction and now it is clearly moving in a very very wrong one, they don't like that, because they rather not have to switch to another distro?

I mean, I am switching. It's because I use the desktop environment for work, not for anything much beyond that. I don't need a phone like interface, I don't accept Apple type interface either, I need an icon per open document, I need a real tree-like menu, I switched the minimize

If Canonical wants Ubuntu's user base to grow substantially, they need to integrate usability testing into its design cycle. That's not the only thing that matters, but there's just no way to beat Microsoft or Apple's software without improving the user experience.

"If Canonical wants Ubuntu's user base to grow substantially, they need to integrate usability testing into its design cycle. That's not the only thing that matters, but there's just no way to beat Microsoft or Apple's software without improving the user experience."

The Ubuntu Reality Distortion Field has blocked your comment. Please rephrase in a way that doesn't say what you just said.

If Canonical wants Ubuntu's user base to grow substantially, they need to integrate usability testing into its design cycle.

Better still and even cheaper, they could take advantage of their existing usability testing focus group called "the entire Ubuntu installed base". When thousands of their dedicated users cry out in horror and spam Launchpad with bug reports each time they introduce a new UI stuffup, perhaps they could, I don't know, this is kinda radical but hear me out, they could try listening to the users.

But no. The users are always wrong and Mark Shuttleworth is always right because he flew in space.

Been a Ubuntu user since Hoary, loved it when they fought GNOME over the "spatial browser" idiocy, but with each new release that breaks things I'm really wanting an alternative.

It seems as though more and more people are trying other distros, and with plenty of good reasons. When I began using Linux, Ubuntu was where I started. I ran it for many years. When they decided to integrate PulseAudio by default, I started considering other options. I now use Debian Squeeze and am happy with it, but for example:

The other day I built a USB stick with Ubuntu for troubleshooting purposes. While I was in the live system, I tried to listen to some music on my local hard drive. I was then subjected to occasional skipping/stuttering in the sound... in 2011... on a six-core machine... with EIGHT gigabytes of memory. There is no excuse for this. It never happens on my native Debian system, so don't blame the drivers. I then had to rip PulseAudio out of the live-USB that I had made and re-route everything to use ALSA just to get stable sound that would play continuously without issue.

Now they're completely changing the desktop environment too, with Unity and all. We just want a stable operating system where the devs concentrate on fixing *problems* and not changing a bunch of things just for the sake of change. I can only imagine how many games will stop working/have problems when they switch to Wayland.

In short, if your goals are to have 2 million users, you should probably try and keep existing users first.

The problem for me though is what to tell other newbies to Linux. My cousin just asked what flavor of Linux I recommend. Do I tell him to use Ubuntu and give him the impression that Linux can't play a music file without occasional stutters? Do I tell him to use Debian and have a slightly more difficult time setting things up, but a better system in the end?

I do like some of the ubuntu derivatives, which seem to do a good job addressing the flaws in Debian and Ubuntu. Give Linux Mint [linuxmint.com] a try... which is pretty easy since it's distributed as a LiveCD/DVD with an install to HD option. It's what I've been recommending to people for a while.

I've even migrated my main server to it from Debian (my one gripe is that the installer doesn't support software RAID configurations as readily, but I'm used to setting those up manually anyway).

The other one I like for netbooks is eeebuntu [eeebuntu.org] 3. Haven't played with their Aurora beta yet, but eeebuntu was pretty good with getting an nice fully-featured compiz-fusion environment on my eeePC with most of the hardware and powersaver features supported out of the box.

I've downloaded two different versions, wrestled with them for a while (first on dual-monitor support, later on sound card issues), and ultimately went back to Windows. I'm a geek, but even I'm not THAT much of a geek to stick with Linux apparently (though Ubuntu definitely was the most user-friendly Linux distro I've seen to date).

I've installed at least two versions on at least two machines and am currently using none of them. My video driver installation queries made me want to choke the living shit out of every condescending, snarky Linux geek that had new hoops for me to jump through, and the actual solution was far simpler than any of their suggestions.

The last time I let the updater install many changes at once I was left with an un-bootable Linux partition. I don't have time to screw with it. I'm back to Windows on both of tho

for (almost) zero knowledge puppy linux is the easiest, one 125MB download and burn, and a usb drive or a dumpster dive desktop with hdd and you can get a full linux. text editing, email, browsing, a calender app, file managment tools (good for simple hd recovery)... the hardest part is setting the cd/dvd to boot, runs faster than ubuntu supports old hardware... its still gnome based though, if that matters to you. and it has a wonderful blu-ray dvd and cd burner tool for converting hdds to blu-ray etc.

Both KDE and Gnome have gone off the reservation.
it is time for other window managers to see some light, such as XFCE, LXDE, or Enlightenment. Of those three I'd say XFCE is at the front of the line with version 4.8. However, LXDE is perfect for VNC due to it being very lightweight.

11.04 Unity 3d is a version 1.0 product... buggy11.11 Unity 2d will be main environment with users able to switch to Unity 3d if they think their hardware can handle it. Thus also a version 1.0 product...buggy.12.04 Wayland Graphic drivers, version 1.0 product..buggy.

So that "polish" users are looking for does not start till 12.11 at least. That is 1 year of 4 years that is going to be frittered away on their own 1.0 products.

Four of them here. That's how many systems I've converted from running Ubuntu to Debian Squeeze in the last two months. Ubuntu had a great opportunity to pick up users during the years when Debian released too infrequently to be viable for the desktop, and no other Linux distribution was built on that base and targeting the desktop well. At this point I see no reason to ever consider Ubunut's latest unstable bling when there's both a two-year Debian release cycle and more regular desktop releases from di

I learned Linux on Slackware, then migrated to Mandrake and Red Hat. After a while, I got tired of having to deal with gruesome package management issues every time I wanted to set up a new installation or upgrade. I slowly stopped using Linux out of frustration because I just wanted a good platform to code on, not one that would become a hindrance.

An IT buddy turned me on to Ubuntu years back and it's been my home networking platform of choice (save the OpenBSD firewall). I even got my boss to install i

Tried CentOS, installer quits hard if you select at the end the wrong packages together, no warning or anything.

Fedora? Can't accept a HD formatted without partitions. Ubuntu can and under Linux it is perfectly valid. Why use MS-DOS partitions on a modern system?

Like it or hate it, Ubuntu is the mover and Shaker. Red Hat has gone corporate. Mandrake (or whatever its name is) has tried going commercial and is limping.

Countless others are gone or near gone.

Is Ubuntu next now it has gone for Unity? Maybe. As said, others have fallen from the leader of the pack before. Ubuntu for now remains the easiests to install for, the onewith the most active user base. Don't like Unity? 11.04 ain't a LTS so you don't have to switch yet. And KUbunutu is an easy switch as well as a switch to Gnome3 or any of the other options.

But Unity I think shows a worrying sign. What does it solve? One of the powers of linux is the ton of "add-ons" that are available for free and all of a sudden you have a desktop that can do nothing. Gnome3 ain't a solution, that piece of software seems determined to remove all options until nothing is left. Here is a hint Gnome team, when Unity is the more capable and customizable compared to Gnome3, YOU SCREWED UP!

KDE4? Don't even get me started.

Yes, there is room for improvement but you make it a LOT easier if you give us at least the basics. Alt-tab, was it such a horrific solution? Task bar? Why do you hate it such? App panel, what did it ever do to you?

200 million users? sure, if there are 200 million people for who a iPhone is just to complex and they want an interface with ZERO buttons, no touch screen, no interaction.

Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu Server edition but their desktop took a massive nosedive. aptitude is the best package management but what is the point if the package is unity or gnome3?

Stop fucking around with the desktop. Realize that a LOT of users switch of Aero on windows and have the same desktop they had 10 or more years ago. It works. Some improvements are possible but for god sakes, make sure the old proven and working elements still work.

Really, we went from a time applet that no longer can display the weather, no any weather option (both unity and gnome3) and needing to hold a key to turn off the computer. (Alt turns suspend into power off).

STOP REDUCING THE USABILITY!

But at its core, Ubuntu still is the most capable, see the earlier HD install option.

Just the desktop is pants but that is pants on Fedora 15 as well (Gnome3).

The real secret to developing a popular system is to remember that newbies are a very transient audience. A newbie won't be a newbie for long. It would be like marketing a condom for virgins. There are a lot of virgins in the world, especially here on slashdot, and they are bound to have sex sooner or later, except here on slashdot, but once they had sex they will need far more condoms then that one time "virgin" branded one.

Your OS user won't remain a newbie for long. You don't see many motor cycle companies aiming high at the learner market do you? Despite that a learner bike can be far more fun, the money is in the "experienced rider" market (the succors who think bigger is better)

Damn, guess motor cycle analogies aren't as good as car analogies.

Anyway, once the newbie linux user has started using it and figured out how to setup a dual monitor, he is going to be disappointed he can't set to different ones. That the login screen can no longer be themed.

It would be like Fisher Price deciding that their "My first XXX" line sells so well it will be easy to sell to adults and partner with Sony for a range of electronic devices. Nope.

Newbies becomes experienced users and then don't want anything to do anymore with a newbie only product.

Your reasoning about newbies is flawed. Some newbies will remain newbies. I know, one is a friend is One. I convinced her to try Unbuntu when her computer became so trashed with viruses (It was hopeless!). I almost regretted helping her switch. For two months she was calling me for help with little stuff. I now got her computer to the point where she is satisfied and no longer calling for help. I just dread the day when an update switches her desktop to Unity. I have warned her not to have anything

Mod up! I got my cousin on Ubuntu years ago (6.06 I believe). He had never been exposed to Linux before. Last time I went to visit him (2 months ago) he had a system dedicated to Debian and another to CentOS.

Well, with Ubuntu becoming more and more mainstream, I wonder how this will affect other Linux distributions.

The other distros will probably be happy to get all those new users. By the time Ubuntu 14.x rolls out they should have alienated almost all of their userbase. Their half baked releases combined with the 6 month release cycle give everyone just enough time to get things stable right before they break it all again. From swapping audio subsystems to experimental unconfigurable GUIs, they make sure to cover all their bases.